Geospatial Software Vendors Declare OGC Plugfest a Success

July 19, 2004, Wayland, Massachusetts. The first "OGC Plugfest" was held June 16 at the OGC's 50th Technical Committee Meeting meetings in Southampton, UK. A plugfest is an event at which vendors gather in a cooperative effort to test and improve interoperability between their product implementations of standards specifications.
Vendors participating in the first OGC Plugfest declared it a great success. Eight vendors tested interoperability between clients and servers designed to comply with Web Map Service 1.1.1 and Web Feature Service 1.0. The procedure was to find problems, document them on a form, deliver the form to the appropriate participant and work together to fix the problems. All the participants agreed that OGC should organize more plug fests, using the same format as the UK event.
Plugfest participants had this to say about the event:
Martin Daly, Cadcorp Ltd.: "Cadcorp was delighted to be involved in the first ever OGC plugfest and looks forward to taking part in many more in the future."
Jeanne Foust, ESRI: "It was a very collaborative experience illustrating interoperability delivery via COTS products."
Ron Lake, Galdos Systems: "We believe that this event was a great success in that real issues and problems could be focused on without the distraction of a formal demonstration."
John Vincent, Intergraph: "Sitting side-by-side with other plugfest participants enabled quick identification and resolution of the few issues found."
Rudy Malou, IONIC Software: "This event truly demonstrated how 'real' interoperability is today in a multi-vendor world."
Markus Mueller, lat/lon: "I think that the plugfest showed that CITE and the compliance tests were a big success."
The OGC is an international voluntary consensus standards organization of more than 260 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing interface specifications. OGC's OpenGIS® Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT.
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